| Ask the Sales Doctor |
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| This is a weekly column transcribed from my Radio Show. "Ask the Sales Doctor" is the segment of the show in which I answer questions sent in by listeners. Send in your questions by mail, email, fax or phone. If I pick yours to be "Question of the Week", you'll win an autographed copy of my best-selling book, The Six Steps to Excellence in Selling. |
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Jeannette writes:
"As a financial advisor I have to ask people some pretty nosy questions. This is easy to do after I've developed some level of rapport and trust, but that takes time. Sometimes I find myself taking the time to develop a high level of rapport and trust with someone who then doesn't even have money to open an account with me. How do I keep from wasting my time with people who are not real prospects without putting people off by getting too nosy at the beginning?"
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Warren answers:
 I've got to tell you, Jeannette, this is one of the finest questions I've ever received in the year-and-a-half-plus that we've been doing this show. I'm going to answer it by not only giving you the way to go about it, but also an anecdote that fits in exactly with your business.
The point here is that as salespeople we have to be willing to ask very simple, qualifying questions up-front with people before we get into the rapport building and the presentation, and all that type of stuff. There are very simple things we need to do. There's something about people's money. It's so emotional that we're afraid to ask them to talk about it.
Here comes the anecdote. I was working in Des Moines, Iowa. It's interesting. Now I live in Iowa. This was many years ago when I still lived in Minneapolis. I was asked to come down to a struggling branch of an investment banking/stock brokerage firm in Des Moines and work with the salespeople and find out what was going wrong with what they were trying to do.
I worked with one of their lead young prospecting-type salespeople. This guy knew more about investing than any ten people. He was so friendly and so easy to talk to. I spent about an hour listening to him on the phone. He had boxes and boxes of cards. This was before people computerized their prospecting system. I looked, and he was so persistent. He was so consistent. He talked to the Jones family fifteen time, and the Baker family twenty-two times, and the Whatever family thirty-seven times.
One particular family he was very excited about. I said, "What do you know about these people?" He said, "They're farmers in Iowa." I said, "What else do you know?" He said, "I don't know." I said, "Do they own their farm?" "I don't know." "Do they lease their farm?" "I don't know." "What do they grow?" "I don't know." "How many acres do they farm?" "I don't know." "How many children do they have?" "I don't know." "What type of equipment do they have?" "I don't know." "How much money do they have?" "I don't know." I said, "You know what? Give me the card. Let me call Mrs. Jones. I'll say I'm your assistant. Let me ask some questions." He said, "Go right ahead."
I called up. I said, "Hi, Mrs. Jones. I'm calling on behalf of Fred." "Oh, Fred, that nice young man. I've been talking to him a lot over the last year." I said, "Yeah, that's one of the reasons we're calling today. Let me ask you a question, Mrs. Jones. Do you do much investing?" She said, "No." I could tell by the way she answered there was something more behind that. I said, "Oh, is most of your money in the bank?" She said, "We don't have any money." I said, "Oh, really. Why is that?" She said, "My husband and I have been on disability. We live on what comes from Social Security." I said, "Let me ask you a question. A lot of the investments that we talk about require people to put up $1,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 or $50,000 at a time if they're buying bond issues. What category would you and your husband fall into."
I was doing this for the benefit of the broker. She burst out laughing. She thought was the funniest thing that she had ever heard because for the last twenty-five years they were fortunate to come up with an extra $5 or $10 at the end of the month. Now, I didn't do that to embarrass Mrs. Jones. I didn't do it to embarrass the stockbroker. But if you are offering a product or a service that requires an investment, wouldn't it be nice to know if people are qualified up front? The answer is yes.
Here's how you do it, Jeannette. All you do is say the following. Now if you've listened to this show before, you know I'm not a big fan of scripting. But in this particular case you have to follow the theme. With investments you say the following, "Mrs. Jones, our clients basically fall into three categories. There are those fortunate few who can afford to invest." and then you name a big number. If your top client invests $100,000 at a time, then you say $100,000. "Mrs. Jones, our clients fall into three basic categories. There are those fortunate few that when we bring them an investment idea, they invest about $100,000. Then there's another group of people that invests somewhere between $25,000 and $50,000 with us when we bring them an investment opportunity. And there are those that invest about $5,000 when we present an investment opportunity to them."
So now you've defined, Jeannette, your A, your B, and your C account. And then you say, "Mrs. Jones, which category would you fall into?" And Mrs. Jones somewhere in central Iowa drops the phone and bursts out laughing, or you might have people say, "Well, yeah, the last bond issue I bought I bought $500,000 worth." So now they've just told you they're an A. Then you go back to your rapport-building and take the time to develop and all that once you know you have a valid prospect.
This is because, Jeannette, if there's no money at the end of the discussion, then you're basically giving away free consulting to someone who is actually going to be more frustrated when you're done because they can't pull the trigger. They don't have the money.
That is the easiest and simplest way I can describe it to you. After you develop the initial rapport, you basically say, "Look, before we go any further, I want to talk about a really simple concept..."
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Getting Nosy
As a financial advisor I have to ask people some pretty nosy questions. This is easy to do after I've developed...
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– Warren
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